Quick decision to sack McChrystal

President Barack Obama and top aides immediately seized on the idea of firing the insubordinate and loose-lipped Afghanistan commander minutes after Obama scanned the first few lines of a Rolling Stone article in the White House Monday night.

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The decision to get rid of McChrystal was not contingent on Gen. David Petraeus agreeing to replace him, administration officials said Wednesday. But the CENTCOM commander’s quick decision to accept the new job — technically a demotion relocating Petraeus from Tampa to Kabul — made Obama’s job a lot easier.

It culminated in the 30-minute Oval Office session with Obama Wednesday – when, technically, it was McChrystal who offered his resignation. Obama accepted.

McChrystal’s break-neck fall from grace began Monday evening when assistant White House press secretary Tommy Vietor was emailed an advance PDF copy of “The Runaway General,” which he quickly printed out for press secretary Robert Gibbs.

An irate Gibbs tracked down the president in the basement of the executive residence to deliver the news that his maverick Afghanistan commander and his team had trashed the White House and U.S. allies in vulgar, vivid terms.

“[Obama] read the first few paragraphs and we decided to go to the Oval Office and get a bigger group together…The possibility [of sacking McChrystal] came up,” said a senior administration official of that first meeting, which included Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior adviser David Axelrod and Gibbs, among others.

The passage that really torqued the president, advisers say, was McChrystal’s reported contempt for U.S. allies in Afghanistan – especially the French – illustrated in the story by McChrystal’s reluctance to meet a senior official in Paris, a dinner appointment one McChrystal aide called “gay.”

Obama, the administration official said, was astounded and alarmed by “the effect it would have on the allies” in Afghanistan, who have been asked to shed blood and “who will be asked to do more” if the U.S. is to begin pulling out by July 2011.

“This was not about the president being angry about the things that were said about himself,” added the aide, who says that Obama never even discussed McCrystal’s reported criticism of the president as detached and intimidated during his meetings with the brass.